Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Just got back from the San Diego Comic Con and a couple of parties in L.A. I'll blog about those later.

For now, here is a dandy little cartoon ditty from Sunday a week ago. I like this idea and am happy with the drawing, but I'm wishing now that I'd made the car keys on his ear more obvious, or drawn them differently somehow. They could get lost in some of the newspapers where they print Bizarro small.

Which brings up a pet peeve: why do so many papers put Garfield all huge and monumental on the front page of their Sunday pages, then relegate cartoons like mine, with elaborate art and relatively complex ideas (that's not saying much for newspaper comics) to smaller bits of real estate deeper in the section? Garfield is simply drawn, commercially produced by a committee of trained surrogates, and read primarily by small children who have yet to develop critical skills capable of discerning much beyond the texture of their SpahettiOs. If I ran a newspaper comics section, I'd feature art and commentary by artists who aren't phoning in their work from their corporate jet. But that's just me.

On another subject, I'm a guy with tatts (six) and piercings (one in each ear) and who appreciates any attempt at individuality. I will admit, however, that those whose number of piercings rival the number of their skin pores, disturb me just a bit. I'm particularly disturbed by people who have something the size of an SUV's hubcaps crammed into a flaccid loop of flesh at the bottom of their ear. I'm a little squeamish about the human body in general and deliberate deformities creep me out a bit. Tongue piercings creep me out even more. It just looks like it would hurt.

Tattoos hurt and I have no aversion to those, so I guess I'm just being a baby. We all have our reservations and limits, I guess.

tongue studs can be quite modest if displayed correctly. the actual piercing is painful (as are all piercings) but healing is the bad part because the inevitable swelling prevents normal eating habits for a couple weeks... needless to say i lost a couple pounds in water weight. you may be wondering "how can a tongue stud be modestly displayed?" well allow me to elaborate-- most tongue studs are a standard 1in-long, 14-gauge bar with two standard sized screw-on balls. to make it sound MORE like a porno ad, the balls are usually pretty big and just take up too much room in your mouth. haha, chuckle chuckle. to remedy this myself (because shorter tongue studs are not made) i wear a long libre stud. not only is the stud shorter than your standard tongue stud, but there is only one ball to contend with (because the "back" is flat due to normal placement against your gums/teeth), which is also smaller than your typical tongue-ring ball. so it fits snug as a bug in a rug inside my mouth and it doesn't flop around and break my teeth. it also makes my dentist happy because what scares him the most is that i'll swallow it while i'm sleeping. but because it's snug, he doesn't worry about it much. my dad didn't even know i had my tongue pierced until i showed him a year afterwards, and even some of my closer acquaintances didn't notice for a long time until i yawned or stuck out my tongue. moral of the story though, tongue rings aren't bad if done correctly.

@3T's-- what an awesome illustration! it's always really neat to see an artist's depiction of a heavily tattooed/pierced person. especially since those of us who have tats and piercings are constantly reminded (by peers, parents, the media...) that our choices will fade, stretch and scar, and will likely not have the same glimmer when we're 85. damn i hate that... "don't you ever think about what your piercings will look like when you're 80?!" no.. not really. but thanks for making me think of my inevitable transition into senior-citizenship!

I have found that one can find quality in Garfield... by removing Garfield himself. garfield minus garfield removes the smarmy piss factory and leaves only Jon Arbuckle talking to himself. Instead of the humorless banality, we see a surreal, angst-ridden and surprisingly coherent portrait of a schizophrenic trying to face modern life. Jon's constant struggle with himself, society, and his inability to achieve anything of import is infinitely more interesting than a focus-group driven marketing machine.

There's also Garkov, which is a generated version of Garfield that uses Markov Chains (a probabilistic model) to synthesize new strips utilizing the existing corpus of comics.

Jon, you just made my day. I loved Garfield as a child, but have hated the very idea of it since I was old eough to tell the difference between a talking cat and a “smarmy piss factory” — so, from, what, about age nine?

Nowadays, I tend to pick up the Sunday funnies, read Garfield, put down the paper (muttering angrily), pause to take a breath, then pick it up again and resume reading the better cartoons. I don’t know why I engage in this ritual, unless it is to reassure myself that, yes, some things will always suck, and you can always count on that in this world (if on little else).

But the two links you shared have breathed new life into that vacuous strip. Thanks for that! :)

piraros right he cant say it but i can....garfield aint shit...its just a way of telling 3 jokes different ways for 25 years.....albeit 3 unfunny jokes....look closely at piraros artwork...it is superb and he is correct to diss anyone who thinks garfield is remotely cool...not even as a child did i think so...im always amused that comics are out there to appeal to young kids... what morons read those comics consistently to kids...i dont know any five or six year olds who read the paper...its quite sad ...like the mtv shows "the shop" and "yo mama they only appealed to white fat ass ladies with black boyfriends...if they aint watchng it then no one is cause in priison contrary to popualr belief they dont get cable so no black man has seen the show

Oh, Dan... It's really simple as far as Garfield goes... Garfield is an easy to productize commodity. You have a main character with big eyes that can be made into stuffed animals and splattered all over all kinds of products... Bizarro lacks the recurring cute big eyeball creature. I don't think The Far Side ever was at the top of the newspapers, either.

Ah, I noticed the keys immediately when I saw it in the paper. I'm glad you didn't make them bigger...it would have blown the gag, somehow.

I have one tat. Thinking of more. And shortcake, I agree...I don't give a rat's ass what it's going to look like when I'm 85. Who's to say I'm going to make to 85, anyway? Live in the now and all that good crap. ;-)

And everyone, ignore the anonymous snipers. We have better ways to spend our energy, IMO.

trolls don't deserve our energy, i agree penny...this is probably one case where if you ignore it, it will go away.

on with the show!...this cartoon is brilliant dan! i could say so much about it, but you already know and some others here have already said it. as for piercings and tatts; i have 3 tatts and used to have an eyebrow piercing, but i took it out one day just because i was done with it. it healed within 3 hours and some 6 months later, you can't even tell it was ever there. the tattoos i made sure to place strategically so i don't regret them when i'm older.

Julie - lie all you want, I know what you did. Coward. If throwing a name out there makes things easier to grasp for you, then my name is Julie also. BTW, kudos on typing a full post with no expletives.

For the record, I have merely critiqued Danny's efforts and pomposity. However, the shills on this blog such as yourself that cannot handle a dissenting voice (as well as Danny himself) have attacked, and thus gotten bit back. There ya go, tiger.

I'm so extremely, TERRIBLY sorry I hurt your poor little virgin eyes with an expletive. I should have known I might offend sensitive folks like you.

Now kindly take your head, and place it between your legs finding the orifice located adjacent to your reproductive organs, and shove it up into the deepest, darkest place the sun doesn't shine, and wallow in the glory of your own excrement, troll.

our newspaper's printing of Bizarro has irked me for some time. That being said, I picked up the location of the keys before reading the text.

I grew up on Garfield, I enjoy most of the strips and own a few books. But they are simple in nature, flat and usually visual lacking. In other words, yeah people like Garfield, yes it sells and makes people laugh, but no it doesn't need to take up half a page when more complex work is shrunk into the surroundings.